One product, one panel, one record.
Align DualBiotic Prebiotic + Probiotic Gummies (60 count) — label audit
The page selling this gummy carries Align's "#1 probiotic brand recommended by Gastroenterologists… due to its unique strain" sentence — and the unique strain that reputation was built on, Bifidobacterium longum subsp. longum 35624, is not in this product. It contains Bacillus coagulans LactoSpore, a different organism from a different genus.
This page is an audit of a label. It records what this product’s panel discloses, what of that could be checked against a primary record, and what could not. The score below ranks this product on that disclosure and on nothing else.
The record this page rests on
- NIH label record
- Label read on
- The most recent dated artefact behind this page. Labels change; this is how old our reading of it is.
- Cohort
- Addendum — outside the founding denominators Torn down 2026-07-31, after the founding cohort of 27 was frozen. It sits outside every D27 denominator the site publishes.
- How deep this went
- Full forensic teardown Panel transcribed, every strain designator queried, every certification chased to its issuer’s own register, and the literature behind each marketing claim opened and read.
The Label Verifiability Score for this product
100.0 out of 100
Rank 1 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 18 other products — 19 products sit on 100.0 and are tied. They hold the position jointly; no tiebreaker is applied, because every tiebreaker available here would be a number the rubric deliberately refused to weigh, smuggled back in to make a list look tidier.
The score measures one thing: how much of what you are buying this company tells you, and how much of that survives being checked against a source that is not the company. It does not measure whether the product works — this site holds no efficacy data of its own, and 0 of 294 organism slots in the founding cohort carry a strain with a human randomised trial for any male-specific outcome, so nobody in this category has evidence that would support a ranking by effect.
Computed over 86% of the rubric by weight — the share of the five questions below this record could answer. The remaining question is unanswered, and unanswered is not nought: it leaves the divisor rather than dragging the score down. That share travels with the number and is never dropped — this score over 86% of the weight and the same score over all of it are different claims.
| Component | Weight | What was counted, and where | Fraction | Weight × fraction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strain identity printed on the panel | 0.24 | 1 of 1 organism slot carries a printed strain designator. | 1 / 1 = 1.0000 | 0.2400 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 1 of 1 organism slot has an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 1 / 1 = 1.0000 | 0.2000 |
| What the CFU count is measured against | 0.22 | Potency basis "through-expiry": CFU figure printed yes, single basis stated yes, basis reaches expiry yes — 3 of 3. | 3 / 3 = 1.0000 | 0.2200 |
| Printed designators that lead to a human trial | 0.20 | 1 of 1 checked organism slot resolves to at least one human randomised trial under the designator exactly as printed. This counts whether the identity leads to a trial, never what the trial found. | 1 / 1 = 1.0000 | 0.2000 |
| Certification confirmed at the issuer’s own register | 0.14 | No certifier register has been queried for this product. Not checked is not the same as holds nothing. | Not answered | — excluded from the divisor, not counted as nought |
0.8600 — the last column added up — divided by 0.86, the weight this record could answer, is 1.0000. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 100.0 above.
See this product’s row in the full ranking, alongside the other 153 scored products, or read what each of the five components asks and how to check it .
What this label discloses
Everything in this table is what the product itself states — on the printed panel, on the brand’s own page, or in the label record the manufacturer filed. Nothing in it is checked yet; checking is the next section.
| Disclosure | As recorded |
|---|---|
| CFU as printed | 1 x 10⁹ CFU |
| What that count is measured against | Through expiry |
| Strain designators | All organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 1 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
Panel footnote, verbatim: "† Provides an effective level of probiotic cells (1 x 10⁹ CFU) until at least the 'best by' date." This is the honest form of the claim, and this is the one product in its batch where the guaranteed number is also the headline number. Storage: no refrigeration required. Credit is due for it, and it is worth separating from the "Guaranteed Potency" badge on the pack — that badge is self-asserted marketing, but unlike most of this category it is actually backed by the footnote.
The panel’s own words on potency, verbatim.
The panel guarantees the count through the expiration or best-by date. This is the only basis that is falsifiable by a reader holding the bottle.
Every organism on the panel carries a printed strain designator. Whether those designators lead anywhere is a separate question, answered below.
| Organism as printed | Designator as printed | Quantity as printed | What the designator resolves to | The query we ran |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bacillus coagulans (correct name: Weizmannia coagulans) | LactoSpore® | 10 mg | Human RCT | "Bacillus coagulans MTCC 5856"[All Fields] → 15; LactoSpore[All Fields] → 9; "Weizmannia coagulans"[All Fields] AND "MTCC 5856"[All Fields] → 4; "Bacillus coagulans MTCC 5856"[All Fields] AND randomized controlled trial[Publication Type] → 3 (37335737, 36862903, 26922379); "Bacillus coagulans MTCC 5856"[All Fields] AND (bloating[All Fields] OR flatulence[All Fields]) → 4; "Bacillus coagulans MTCC 5856"[All Fields] AND constipation[All Fields] → 1; "Bacillus coagulans MTCC 5856"[All Fields] AND (gummy[All Fields] OR gummies[All Fields]) → 0 |
What of that is verifiable
A disclosure is verifiable when a reader can open a record that neither we nor the brand controls and see the same thing. Below is every dated artefact this page rests on. What is absent from this list is not verified, however reasonable it sounds.
- Photograph of the printed panel — 8_00037000779377_Label_Facts.jpghttps://images.ctfassets.net/v9uvlxfr6vqd/7APR0eSZxhaKX9DaBeqMHd/f886ec865714ef492d194006d8fcfc84/8_00037000779377_Label_Facts.jpg — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured The brand's own Supplement Facts image, a 3000 × 3000 JPEG on its Contentful CDN, downloaded and transcribed verbatim. Per 2-gummy serving: Bacillus coagulans LactoSpore®† 10 mg ††, inulin 2.5 g ††, 20 kcal, 5 g total carbohydrate, 3 g dietary fibre (11% DV), 1 g total sugars of which 1 g added, 15 mg sodium. Footnote †, verbatim: "Provides an effective level of probiotic cells (1 x 10⁹ CFU) until at least the 'best by' date." Other ingredients: water, sucrose; less than 2% of pectin, natural flavors, citric acid, sodium citrate, color (black carrot, annatto, genipap juice concentrate, watermelon juice concentrate), coconut oil, carnauba wax, corn starch.
- Internet Archive capture — 20260227022153 (opens in a new tab) captured Archived Amazon product page, used for the price, the directions ("Take up to two servings per day"), the "1 Billion CFUs – the effective dosage of our probiotic strain" bullet, the "for Women and Men" listing title and the ProVoice footnote. Live Amazon returns a CAPTCHA page to automation, so the price is of-date, not current.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 291981 (opens in a new tab) captured NIH label record for Align Kids Probiotic gummies, UPC 0 37000 49281 8 — the independent corroboration of the milligram-to-CFU relationship on this ingredient. It transcribes "LactoSpore | 5 mg | 5 × 10⁸ CFU", exactly half the milligrams for exactly half the CFU of the adult gummy, so the two labels are internally consistent. NIH's transcription carries no MTCC accession either, because the label does not print one.
How many of its strains have a human trial for what it is sold for
Across the frozen founding cohort, 0 of 294 organism slots (0.0%) carry an organism with a human randomised controlled trial for any male-specific outcome. Not for this product — for all 27 of the founding teardowns, taken together. That is the number to hold against any men’s probiotic, including this one.
Two further founding-cohort figures for context: only 43 of 294 organism slots carry a strain with any human RCT at all under the exact code printed on the label, and only 2 of 27 products have a published human trial of the finished formula — the thing actually in the bottle. All three figures divide by the frozen cohort of 27 teardowns and 294 organism slots, never by every teardown on this site.
For this product specifically, 1 organism slot carries a strain with a human RCT under the exact designator printed on the label.
A word on what a designator has to clear before it counts here. The organism must be named with the exact strain code that appears in the trial, the trial must be in humans, and the code must return that trial when a reader searches it. A species name does not qualify: the trials in this field are of strains, and a species contains thousands of them.
What it costs per day
$0.70 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $20.89 USD
- What that buys
- 60-gummy bottle at $0.35 a gummy; serving is 2 gummies, 30 servings per container ($20.89 ÷ 30 = $0.6963). At the dose that actually matches the trials — the directions permit "up to two servings per day" — the bottle lasts 15 days and the cost is $1.39 a day. The brand does not sell direct and shows no price on alignprobiotics.com; this is the marketplace price at the cited archive capture, and prices in this category move.
- Price checked
- — the source we read it from (opens in a new tab)
What certification it holds, checked at the issuer’s own register
A badge on a bottle is a claim like any other. Every row below was checked — or not checked — at the certifier’s own public register, never at the badge. Across the frozen founding cohort, 2 of 27 products hold a certification we could confirm at the issuer — a founding-cohort figure, not a count over every teardown on this site.
How it differs from the same brand’s women’s version
Across the fourteen same-brand men’s-versus-women’s label diffs run inside the frozen founding cohort, zero men’s or default formulas contain a probiotic strain, identified by designator, that was selected on male-specific evidence. In eight of the fourteen the sex-specific differentiator is a botanical or a mineral, and in five of the fourteen the women’s SKU is better-specified, cheaper, or both — “better-specified” meaning the panel that discloses more, never the panel with more in it. The rule behind each of those counts, and all fourteen pairs classified against it , are published in full. Diffs run on teardowns added since sit outside this fourteen, and outside the sentence above.
Compared against Align Women's Prebiotic + Probiotic Cranberry Gummies. Diffed .
What the two panels differ by
- The women's panel adds 258 mg of cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) fruit powder. Nothing whatsoever is added on the unisex side. Align DualBiotic panel image 8_00037000779377_Label_Facts.jpg against Align Women's Cranberry Gummies panel image 7_00037000979957_Label_Facts, both read from the brand's own CDN 2026-07-31
- The women's SKU is a 50-count bottle at 25 servings against this 60-count at 30 servings, and its macros run 25 kcal and 2 g total sugars against 20 kcal and 1 g here. The same two brand panel images, read 2026-07-31
What is identical across the pair
- Bacillus coagulans LactoSpore® at 10 mg per serving on both panels
- Inulin at 2.5 g per serving on both panels
- A guarantee of 1 × 10⁹ CFU until at least the best-by date on both panels
- The same 2-gummy serving size
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 one-billion-cfu-called-the-effective-dosage-at-half-the-trial-dose
Both the brand product page and the Amazon description carry, verbatim, "THERE'S MORE TO PROBIOTICS THAN JUST MORE CFUs. Align Prebiotic + Probiotic Gummies contain 1 Billion CFUs – the effective dosage of our probiotic strain to support your digestive health." There is no published RCT of Bacillus coagulans MTCC 5856 at 1 × 10⁹ CFU/day. Every one of the three used 2 × 10⁹. "The effective dosage" is asserted at a dose the strain's own trial programme never tested.
The record: PMIDs 26922379, 36862903 and 37335737, doses read verbatim; brand PDP and Wayback 20260227022153 of amazon.com/dp/B079PWNBZW, copy quoted verbatim, all 2026-07-31
Finding 2 number-one-recommended-due-to-its-unique-strain-on-a-product-without-that-strain
The page selling this gummy says "Align Probiotic is the #1 probiotic brand recommended by Gastroenterologists for over 15 years running due to its unique strain." Align's unique strain is Bifidobacterium longum subsp. longum 35624™. This gummy contains Bacillus coagulans LactoSpore® and no 35624 at all. The brand's own comparison chart lists 35624 as the active in all three of its capsule products and does not include the gummies. Twenty years of reputational asset built on 35624's IBS trials is being lent, sentence-intact, to a different genus.
The record: Brand PDP copy and Amazon A+ comparison image 81DJiGNbs0L, both read 2026-07-31, against the panel image 8_00037000779377_Label_Facts.jpg — open ithttps://www.alignprobiotics.com/en-us/products/probiotics-digestive-support/prebiotic-probiotic-gummies — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 3 strain-identity-by-trademark-only
No MTCC, ATCC, DSM, CNCM or NCIMB number is printed on the panel. Identity is resolvable only through the ingredient supplier's own papers, and NIH's transcription of the sibling Kids gummies carries no accession either, because that is all the label says.
The record: Panel image 8_00037000779377_Label_Facts.jpg and DSLD 291981, both read 2026-07-31
Finding 4 all-efficacy-evidence-is-supplier-authored
All three MTCC 5856 RCTs come from Majeed, Nagabhushanam and colleagues at Sami-Sabinsa, which owns the LactoSpore trademark. PMID 37335737 discloses it verbatim: "authors MM, KN, SP, LM, and SA are affiliated with Sami-Sabinsa Group Limited or Sabinsa Corporation." No independent replication was found.
The record: PMID 37335737 COI statement quoted verbatim, plus PMIDs 26922379 and 36862903 authorship, checked 2026-07-31
Finding 5 the-supplement-facts-panel-exists-only-as-a-3000-pixel-jpeg
The panel is 8_00037000779377_Label_Facts.jpg, a 3000 × 3000 JPEG on the brand's CDN. The page's alt text describes the image but does not carry the ingredient values, and there is no NIH transcription for this SKU. A screen reader, a price-comparison bot, an LLM shopping agent or a consumer who cannot zoom cannot read what is in this bottle.
The record: images.ctfassets.net panel asset and the brand PDP alt text, both read 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://images.ctfassets.net/v9uvlxfr6vqd/7APR0eSZxhaKX9DaBeqMHd/f886ec865714ef492d194006d8fcfc84/8_00037000779377_Label_Facts.jpg — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 6 no-nih-label-record-for-this-sku
Four queries returned no record for the adult DualBiotic gummies, while the brand's Kids gummies are filed (DSLD 291981, entered 2023-07-18).
The record: DSLD /search-filter queries q=Dualbiotic (0), q=Align Dualbiotic (30 hits, no gummy SKU), q=Align Gummies (30 hits, Kids only), q=prebiotic probiotic gummies (30 hits, no Align), all run 2026-07-31
Finding 7 the-dose-that-matches-the-evidence-is-disclosed-only-in-the-directions
The Amazon directions read, verbatim, "Adults 12 and over chew 2 gummies. Take up to two servings per day." Two servings is 4 gummies and 2 × 10⁹ CFU, which does match the trial dose — at $1.39 a day, with the 60-count bottle lasting 15 days. The dose that matches the evidence is never the dose on the front of the pack.
The record: Wayback 20260227022153 of amazon.com/dp/B079PWNBZW, Directions field quoted verbatim
Finding 8 the-provoice-footnote-behind-number-one-recommended
The brand site's own footnotes read "‡Among Gastroenterologists who recommended a brand of probiotic in a ProVoice 2008-2023 survey" and "‡Among Doctors who recommended a brand of probiotic in ProVoice 2013-2023 surveys"; Amazon's version reads "‡Among Doctors and Gastroenterologists who recommended a brand of probiotic in ProVoice 2024 survey." Two things follow: it is a paid market-research survey of self-reported recommendation, not a clinical or comparative-efficacy finding, and its denominator is restricted to physicians who already recommend some probiotic brand.
The record: Brand PDP footnote and Wayback 20260227022153 of amazon.com/dp/B079PWNBZW, both quoted verbatim 2026-07-31
What we could not verify
Every gap below is published rather than deleted. Most are derived automatically from the empty fields in this page’s own record, so a gap cannot be hidden by leaving a box blank.
- Third-party certification
- No certifier register has been queried for this product. An empty certification list on this page means not checked — it does not mean the product holds nothing.
- Any certification register
- usp.org's verified-products listing returned HTTP 403, nsf.org's certified-products search returned HTTP 403, and nongmoproject.org's product finder returned HTTP 404. No claim is made in either direction about whether P&G holds any listing. Worth noting alongside that: this product claims no third-party certification mark at all. Its on-pack badges are Gluten free, No Refrigeration Required, Guaranteed Potency and Vegetarian — of which "Gluten free" is an FDA-regulated content claim rather than a certification, and "Guaranteed Potency" is a self-asserted badge that the panel footnote actually backs. There is no specific certification claim outstanding, and the absence of a listing was not proven either.
- A deposit accession for the organism
- No ATCC, DSM, CNCM, NCIMB or MTCC number appears anywhere on the label. The trademark resolves to MTCC 5856 only through the ingredient supplier's own published papers.
- Any independent, non-supplier replication of the MTCC 5856 trials
- All three published RCTs are authored by the Sami-Sabinsa group, which owns the LactoSpore trademark, with the affiliation disclosed verbatim in PMID 37335737. No replication by an unaffiliated group was found.
- An NIH label record for this SKU
- Four queries: "Dualbiotic" returned 0 hits in total; "Align Dualbiotic" returned 30 hits with no gummy SKU among them, only the 14/21/28-count capsules, Chewables and Kids gummies; "Align Gummies" returned 30 hits with only the Kids gummies and Chewables; "prebiotic probiotic gummies" returned 30 hits with no Align product at all. The adult DualBiotic gummies are not in the US government's label database. That is not illegal — the database is a voluntary collection effort, not a registry — but it removes the one independent transcription that would let a consumer read this panel as text.
- The product's UPC
- The GTIN embedded in Align's Supplement Facts image filenames — 00037000779377 here — is a P&G file-naming convention, not a verified UPC, and it is not asserted as one.
How to check every line of this page yourself
Nothing on this page requires trusting us. Every claim above resolves to a record you can open:
- Open the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record linked at the top of this page. It is the label the manufacturer filed, not our transcription of it.
- Compare the CFU line and the suggested-use line against the disclosure table above. If they disagree with us, we are wrong and we want to know.
- Take any strain designator from the panel and run the query printed beside it. The query is published precisely so you can get a different answer than we did.
- Divide the price by the number of days the label’s own dose instructions make the container last. That arithmetic is the whole of the cost-per-day row.
- Search the certifier’s own register for this product, not for the brand. A company can participate in a programme without this product being on its list.
Start with the credit, because this product earns some. On the two things this category most often fails — an expiry basis, and a strain with any trial at all — it passes. The panel footnote reads “Provides an effective level of probiotic cells (1 x 10⁹ CFU) until at least the ‘best by’ date.” That is the honest form of the claim, and it is the one product in its batch where the guaranteed number is also the headline number. The organism has three real human RCTs on digestive endpoints. The sugar load is 1 g.
Now the sentence on the page. Align’s page for this gummy says the brand is “#1 probiotic brand recommended by Gastroenterologists for over 15 years running due to its unique strain.” Align’s unique strain is Bifidobacterium longum subsp. longum 35624™. This product does not contain it. It contains Bacillus coagulans LactoSpore® — a different organism from a different genus. The brand’s own A+ comparison chart lists 35624 as the active in all three of its capsule products and does not include the gummies at all. Twenty years of reputation, built on one strain’s IBS trials, is being lent sentence-intact to another.
Then the dose. The same page says the gummies “contain 1 Billion CFUs – the effective dosage of our probiotic strain.” Every published efficacy RCT of MTCC 5856 used 2 × 10⁹ CFU/day: PMID 26922379 in IBS-D, PMID 36862903 in functional gas and bloating, PMID 37335737 in healthy adults. There is no published trial at 1 × 10⁹. The dose that does match is buried where marketing never goes — in the directions: “Take up to two servings per day.” Four gummies, 2 × 10⁹ CFU, $1.39 a day, and the bottle lasts fifteen days.
Two structural notes. The organism is identified by supplier trademark only — no ATCC, DSM, CNCM, NCIMB or MTCC number anywhere on the label — so a consumer holding the bottle cannot get from “LactoSpore®” to “MTCC 5856” without leaving the package. And all three of the strain’s trials are authored by the company that owns the trademark, with the affiliation disclosed verbatim in PMID 37335737. No independent replication was found.
Finally, the gendering. The women’s counterpart is this gummy plus 258 mg of cranberry powder — probiotic content byte-identical, same 10 mg, same inulin, same 1 × 10⁹ guarantee. And there is no men’s counterpart at all: the complete brand sitemap carries a women’s collection, two women’s SKUs, a women’s guide and a women’s article, and nothing men’s anywhere.